10 BEST EROTIC PASSAGES

BY: Malcolm Cooper

#10 – Mysteries of Pittsburgh by Michael Chabon

“Are you in full possession of your faculties?”

“I can’t be certain; no.”

“Well, it’s about time,” he said. He pinched my earlobe. “Let’s go exhaust all the possibilities.”

“Could we please do it slowly?”

“No, he said, and he was right. We did it very rapidly, in the Weatherwoman’s bed, passing from toothed kisses through each backward and alien, but familiar, station on the old road to intercourse, which loomed there always before me, black and brutal and smiling, more alien, more backward, and more familiar than anything else. Then, perhaps ten or fifteen minutes after my arrival at the house, with a hard, spongy fistful of him in my right hand, and my left hand flat against his stomach, I was overcome with a feeling that made our black destination cease to seem looming. My heart was simultaneously broken and filled with lust.

Michael Chabon is probably the finest prose stylist of his generation. This is his debut novel, and he writes like he has nothing to lose — or, everything to gain. The novel follows the character Art Bechstein after he graduates from college and begins to explore what that certain type of adult freedom has to offer. Identifying as straight, in this passage he sleeps with a man. Chabon writes the scene in all its awkwardness and lust, putting a wrench in the classic bildungsroman and its heteronormative expectations.

 

#9 – Sutree by Cormac McCarthy

“They could hear the river running in the dark. He heard her breathing beside him, her breast rising and falling, eyes watching the fire. Suttree rose onto his knees and reached across the flames and jostled the stump forward into a better place. He looked back at her. She had her knees up and her arms locked about them. Her full thighs shone in the firelight, the little wedge of pink rayon that pursed her cleft. He leaned to her and took her face in his hands and kissed her, child’s breath, an odor of raw milk. She opened her mouth. He cupped her breast in his palm and her eyes fluttered and she slumped against him. When he put his hand up her dress her legs fell open bonelessly. 

This is nothing but trouble, he said

I dont care.

Her dress was around her waist. Incredible amounts of flesh naked in the firelight. She was warm and wet and softly furred. She seemed barely conscious. He felt giddy. An obscene delight not untouched by just a little sorrow as he pulled down her drawers. Struggling one-handed with buttons. Her thighs were slathered with mucus. She put her arm around his neck. He bowed her back and sucked her breath in sharply.

Hers was a tale of bridled lust. He made her tell him everything. Never a living man. When he rose from between her thighs the fire had died almost to coals. She sat and smoothed her skirt and swept back her hair. She got up and took up her fallen underclothing and went to the lean-to. Suttree saw her go with a basin toward the river and when she returned she had bathed and changed her dress and he had mended back the fire and she came and sat by him and he took her hand.”

Nobody, I don’t think, would ever call Cormac McCarthy a sexy writer. Dark, yes. Hard to read, certainly. Important, you bet. Suttree seems to be the novel in which he breaks most of his own conventions; it gets in this character’s head a lot more than his other treatment of characters. This passage shows that the raw, descriptive nature of McCarthy’s prose can transfer well from the gritty to the sensual. The ability to write a more well-rounded character, too, raises the stakes of eroticism. And the “mucus” on her thighs? That doesn’t really leave much to the imagination. It’s all highly original and, most importantly, weird. 

 

#8 – Delta of Venus by Anais Nin

“When she saw that he was dissolved with pleasure, she stopped, divining that perhaps if she deprived him now he might make a gesture towards fulfillment. At first he made no motion. His sex was quivering, and he was tormented with desire… Marianne grew desperate. She pushed his hand away, took his sex into her mouth again, and with her two hands she encircled his sexual parts, caressed him and absorbed him until he came. He leaned over with gratitude, tenderness, and murmured, ‘You are the first woman, the first woman, the first woman…’”

Everybody’s favorite writer of early feminist literature, Anais Nin writes here for a short story collection commissioned by a private collector. As a result, the normal constraints imposed by the standards of publishing houses do not apply. What’s great here is that she writes from the feminine-identifying perspective, something totally original and taboo at the time (1940s). Later on, we’ll see how her relationship with Henry Miller affected each’s erotic writing. 

 

#7 – Gravity’s Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon

She has sunk to the deep bed, pulling him along, into down, satin, seraphic and floral embroidery, turning immediately to take his erection into her stretched fork, into a single vibration on which the night is tuning… as they fuck she quakes, body strobing miles beneath him in cream and night-blue, all sound suppressed, eyes in crescents behind the gold lashes, jet earrings, long, octahedral, flying without a sound, beating against her cheeks, black sleet, his face above her unmoved, full of careful technique-is it for her? or wired into the Slothropian Run-together they briefed her on-she will move him, she will not be mounted by a plastic shell… her breathing has grown more hoarse, over a threshold into sound… thinking she might be close to coming he reaches a hand into her hair, tries to still her head, needing to see her face: this is suddenly a struggle, vicious and real—she will not surrender her face—and out of nowhere she does begin to come, and so does Slothrop.

Like Cormac McCarthy, the stylings of Thomas Pynchon aren’t usually considered erotic; nor does he write much in terms of “real-time” sex scenes. But in all its glory, here is a passage in which he takes his incredible talent to the viscerally sexual. There is a lot of great imagery here, long sentences (very Pynchon-esque) that seem to twist and turn with the movement of the bodies. 

 

#6 – Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D.H Lawrence

“And when he came into her, with an intensification of relief and consummation that was pure peace to him, still she was waiting. She felt herself a little left out. And she knew, partly it was her own fault. She willed herself into this separateness. Now perhaps she was condemned to it. She lay still, feeling his motion within her, his deep-sunk intentness, the sudden quiver of him at the springing of his seed, then the slow-subsiding thrust. That thrust of the buttocks, surely it was a little ridiculous. If you were a woman, and a part in all the business, surely that thrusting of the man’s buttocks was supremely ridiculous. Surely the man was intensely ridiculous in this posture and this act…Yes, this was love, this ridiculous bouncing of the buttocks, and the wilting of the poor, insignificant, moist little penis. This was the divine love!!”

D.H Lawrence has become synonymous with erotic literature. And for good reason: Here is some fine writing by a Victorian stylist whose prose changes both the societal and literary expectations of the time. In this passage, the yearning of Lady Chatterley in such graphic detail (for the time) raised more than a few eyebrows at the time. The entire novel was subject to harsh censorship at the time because of the graphic details, but the added realism of these scenes forever place Lawrence as one of the most important modernist writers. 

 

#5 – Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller

“At night when I look at Boris’ goatee lying on the pillow I get hysterical. O Tania, where now is that warm cunt of yours, those fat, heavy garters, those soft, bulging thighs? There is a bone in my prick six inches long. I will ream out every wrinkle in your cunt, Tania, big with seed. I will send you home to your Sylvester with an ache in your belly and your womb turned inside out. Your Sylvester! Yes, he knows how to build a fire, but I know how to inflame a cunt. I shoot hot bolts into you, Tania, I make your ovaries incandescent. Your Sylvester is a little jealous now? He feels something, does he? He feels the remnants of my big prick. I have set the shores a little wider. I have ironed out the wrinkles. After me you can take on stallions, bulls, rams, drakes, St. Bernards. You can stuff toads, bats, lizards up your rectum. You can shit arpeggios if you like, or string a zither across your navel. I am fucking you, Tania, so that you’ll stay fucked. And if you are afraid of being fucked publicly I will fuck you privately. I will tear off a few hairs from your cunt and paste them on Boris’ chin. I will bite into your clitoris and spit out two franc pieces…”

We enter the midsection of our list with everybody’s grandfather’s favorite dirty book. Miller broke a lot of ground in terms of what an author can actually say; that is, what one is allowed to publish before legal action is taken against the text. The novel’s legal history is long and problematic, being deemed as pornography in the US after being published in France, a decision that was overturned in 1964 by the Supreme Court. Today we can enjoy the unbridled vulgarity of these words with a smile on our faces and a feather in our literary cap. By the way, Anais Nin and Henry Miller were famous lovers, exercising their use of erotic language in their sordid letters.

 

#4 – Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin

He locked the door behind us, and then for a moment, in the gloom, we simply stared at each other – with dismay, with relief, and breathing hard. I was trembling. I thought, if I do not open the door at once and get out of here, I am lost. But I knew I could not open the door, I knew it was too late; soon it was too late to do anything but moan. He pulled me against him, putting himself into my arms as though he were giving me himself to carry, and slowly pulled me down with him to that bed. With everything in me screaming No! yet the sum of me sighed Yes.

I was in a terrible confusion. Sometimes I thought, but this is your life. Stop fighting it. Stop fighting. Or I thought, but I am happy. And he loves me. I am safe. Sometimes, when he was not near me, I thought, I will never let him touch me again. Then, when he touched me, I thought, it doesn’t matter, it is only the body, it will soon be over. When it was over, I lay in the dark and listened to his breathing and dreamed of the touch hands, of Giovanni’s hands, or anybody’s hands, hands which would have the power to crush me and make me whole again.

What kind of life can we have in this room? – this filthy little room. What kind of life can two men have together anyway? All this love you talk about – isn’t it just that you want to be made to feel strong? You want to go out and be the big laborer and bring home the money and you want me to stay here and wash the dishes and cook the food and clean this miserable closet of a room and kiss you when you come in through that door and lie with you at night and be your little girl. That’s what you want. That’s what you mean and that’s all you mean when you say you love me.

Along with Truman Capote, James Baldwin was one of the first writers of the 20th Century to be unashamed of queer aspects in literary prose. Identifying as bisexual for most of his life, Baldwin fought the system with aplomb and wore that activism as a badge of honor (his FBI file was over 1,000 pages long). Giovanni’s room is great because it presents a fluid sexuality, something never quite done before with such style and grace. This scene in particular works well in that it captures that dichotomy of heteronormativity with natural sexual urges. Sexuality isn’t always easy to pin down or write about; Baldwin captures the struggle for sexual acceptance quite well. 

 

#3 – “Secretary” by Mary Gaitskill

“The last time I made a typing error and the lawyer summoned me to his office, two unusual things occurred. The first was that after he finished spanking me he told me to pull up my skirt. Fear hooked my stomach and pulled it toward my chest. I turned my head and tried to look at him.

“You’re not worried that I’m going to rape you, are you?” he said. “Don’t. I’m not interested in that, not in the least. Pull up your skirt.”

I turned my head away from him. I thought, I don’t have to do this. I can stop right now. I can straighten up and walk out. But I didn’t. I pulled up my skirt.

“Pull down your panty hose and underwear.”

A finger of nausea poked my stomach.

“I told you I’m not going to fuck you. Do what I say.”

The skin on my face and throat was hot, but my fingertips were cold on my legs as I pulled down my underwear and panty hose. The letter before me became distorted beyond recognition. I thought I might faint or vomit, but I didn’t. I was held up by a feeling of dizzying suspension, like the one I have in dreams where I can fly, but only if I get into some weird position.

At first he didn’t seem to be doing anything. Then I became aware of a small frenzy of expended energy behind me. I had an impression of a vicious little animal frantically burrowing dirt with its tiny claws and teeth. My hips were sprayed with hot sticky muck.

“Go clean yourself off,” he said. “And do that letter again.”

I stood slowly and felt my skirt fall over the sticky gunk. He briskly swung open the door and I left the room, not even pulling up my panty hose and underwear, since I was going to use the bathroom anyway. He closed the door behind me, and the second unusual thing occurred. Susan, the paralegal, was standing the waiting room with a funny look on her face. She was a blonde who wore short, fuzzy sweaters and fake gold jewelry around he neck. At her friendliest, she had a whining, abrasive quality that clung to her voice. Now, she could barely say hello. Her stupidly full lips were parted speculatively.

“Hi,” I said. “Just a minute.” She noted the awkwardness of my walk, because of the lowered panty hose.

I got to the bathroom and wiped myself off. I didn’t feel embarrassed. I felt mechanical. I wanted to get that dumb paralegal out of the office so I could come back to the bathroom and masturbate.

Susan completed her errand and left. I masturbated. I retyped the letter. The lawyer sat in his office all day.”

Perhaps the best short story collection of the 80s, Bad Behavior can thank “Secretary” for wrapping up all the themes explored in the book in one weird, cringe-worthy story. Gaitskill is very skilled at writing about power dynamics, both sexual or otherwise, and it is with such fabulous and lurid prose that we can experience the hauntingly beautiful mess of sexuality. Questions about consent and power come up in her work, especially with this story; but rather than avoiding the discussion, this story, as well as the others, confronts it head-on, complicating the image and the idea all at the same time. 

 

#2 – “Please Master” by Allen Ginsberg

Please master can I touch your cheeck

please master can I kneel at your feet

please master can I loosen your blue pants

please master can I gaze at your golden haired belly

please master can I have your thighs bare to my eyes

please master can I take off my clothes below your chair

please master can I can I kiss your ankles and soul

please master can I touch lips to your hard muscle hairless thigh

please master can I lay my ear pressed to your stomach

please master can I wrap my arms around your white ass

please master can I lick your groin gurled with blond soft fur

please master can I touch my tongue to your rosy asshole

please master may I pass my face to your balls,

please master order me down on the floor,

please master tell me to lick your thick shaft

please master put your rough hands on my bald hairy skull

please master press my mouth to your prick-heart

please master press my face into your belly, pull me slowly strong thumbed

till your dumb hardness fills my throat to the base

till I swallow and taste your delicate flesh-hot prick barrel veined Please

Isn’t Ginsberg just the best? I mean, nobody writes such graphic verse with such purpose, with such passion and inventiveness. This poem, written in May 1968, showcases what a pain-in-the-ass Ginsberg had become to authorities and courts during the counterculture era in which he was writing. Although “Howl” is more famous for being the one that got him censored, “Please Master,” published later, showcases his penchant for writing what is true, real, and unadulterated. According to Ginsberg, the second in line to the throne in terms of Whitman-eque American voices that write at the level of true and basic language: “First thought, best thought.”

 

#1 – Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami

“And again, as before, she unzipped my fly, took out my penis, and put it in her mouth. The one thing different from before was that she did not take off her own clothing. She wore Kumiko’s dress the whole time. I tried to move, but it felt as if my body were tied down by invisible threads. I felt myself growing big and hard inside her mouth.

I saw her fake eyelashes and curled hair tips moving. Her bracelets made a dry sound against each other. Her tongue was long and soft and seemed to wrap itself around me. Just as I was about to come, she suddenly moved away and began slowly to undress me. She took off my jacket, my tie, my pants, my shirt, my underwear, and made me lie down on the bed. Her own clothes she kept on, though. She sat on the bed, took my hand, and brought it under her dress. She was not wearing panties. My hand felt the warmth of her vagina. It was deep, warm, and very wet. My fingers were all but sucked inside. …

Then Creta Kano mounted me and used her hand to slip me inside her. Once she had me deep inside, she began a slow rotation of her hips. As she moved, the edges of the pale-blue dress caressed my naked stomach and thighs. With the skirts of the dress spread out around her, Creta Kano, riding atop me, looking like a soft, gigantic mushroom that had silently poked its face up through the dead leaves on the ground and opened under the sheltering wings of night. Her vagina felt warm and at the same time cold. It tried to envelop me, to draw me in, and at the same time to press me out. My erection grew larger and harder. I felt I was about to burst wide open. It was the strangest sensation, something that went beyond simple sexual pleasure. It felt as if something inside her, something special inside her, were slowly working its way through my organ into me.”  

Murakami needs no introduction. The reason why this passage is number 1 is a testament to the economic, graphic, and mobile nature of the scene presented to us; it doesn’t shy away from abrupt language, it progresses as a scene of the body, and it puts us in both character’s heads. The ambassador of weirdness and the strange from Japan, Murakami has always embraced questions of the flesh as a juxtaposition to questions of the divine. This passage is as spiritual as it is physical, and in placing the two upward into view, we can see how sex changes everything.